This award, named in honor of the late Esa "Espi" Repo, is awarded to a particular member of the Doom community who has shown exceptional devotion to the community over a long span of time. While there was some initial discontent on making this award an annual tradition, we feel there are still a few steadfast pillars of the community who might merit a mention. As such, the Espi award lives on to honor those who have showed as much lifetime dedication to the game as Espi himself. This year's recipient is sure not to disappoint in this regard.

With Doom now officially of drinking age, it seems only right that we as a community give it a vicarious toast of sorts. And what better way could there be to do that than to honor once again one of those, amongst many, who have gone above and beyond the ordinary level of dedication to make Doom a secondary career?

This year's Espi Award for Lifetime Achievement is presented with gratitude to Ty Halderman.

Ty is, objectively speaking, the longest lasting member of the Doom community. His interest in the game appears in some of the earliest Usenet threads with timestamps of 1993 and 1994. TeamTNT, the largest game modding group in history, with a grand total of 110 current and former members altogether, was founded before even the first complete level editor, DEU, was released. While so many others have fallen to the wayside to play those trendy Duke Nukem and Quake games, or simply lost interest in maintaining the community they originally built, Ty has remained.

Ty is best known for his still-ongoing role as the maintainer of the /idgames archive, the FTP-based treasure trove of the community's collective two decades of slavish devotion to the game we call Doom. He took over this role from Frans P. de Vries in late 1997 and has, with only a very few short vacations during this time (most due to server outages), held this vital role continuously since.

Ty didn't start with the archive, however. Both alone and as part of his team, he is responsible for the release of some 21 enumerated maps beginning in 1994, plus more which are housed within some of the most memorable megawads ever released. His resumé reads like a Brief History of Doom Mods: Icarus, Bloodlands, Grievance, Eternal Doom, Pursuit, Reclamation, and The Return, to name a few.

This is of course deliberately skipping over one of the most momentous achievements of his Doom career, which has to be the 1996 release of TNT: Evilution, so far the only purely community-driven Doom modification to receive blessing as an official id Software product. Ty, along with his other teammates, deserves extra consideration for this part of the Final Doom project, since the process of getting it to market was by all accounts totally thankless. Not only did the team go almost completely uncredited while at the same time being asked to make serious compromises in their original vision, but they also faced undeserved backlash from the community at the time, stemming for the most part from unfortunate misunderstandings.

Ty has patiently weathered many similar storms during his long tenure as the archive maintainer, remaining remarkably professional while dealing with some of the least agreeable contributors to grace our community, and even shrugging off a few vacuous personal threats.

In December 1997, the Doom source code was released, an event that revitalized and changed the shape of the entire community. Ty and his team were not to miss out on this new wave of enthusiasm - he quickly put together an all-star group of programmers which to this day remains unrivaled in terms of collective credentials, including the seasoned professional Jim Flynn and the still well-known Lee Killough, along with Rand Phares and Stan Gula. This formidable bunch would produce in less than a year's time the landmark BOOM source port, which carved out a new standard in stability, compatibility, and editing capability which has left an indelible impression on virtually every port since.

Ty's Doomworld Forums title was updated by Lüt on May 27, 2008, to read "Essential Pillar of the Community." While the exact event which prompted this seems to be irrevocably lost to the sands of time, its truth is still self-evident. So, pop the corks and let loose the bubbly. This one's for Ty.